


Keep Watch

by boxoftheskyking



Category: Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: Gen, Kind of maybe a little brutal so really don't read if that's triggery for you, Panic Attack, Papa Stilinski being the greatest, Stream of Consciousness, Triggers: Anxiety Disorder
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-09-07
Updated: 2012-09-07
Packaged: 2017-11-13 18:15:33
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,071
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/506315
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/boxoftheskyking/pseuds/boxoftheskyking
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"Stiles?" He's not really asking, he knows, but he has to say the lines so that they can pretend this is an isolated incident. "What's wrong?"</p><p>Stiles has a Bad Night.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Keep Watch

**Author's Note:**

> After some consideration, I've decided to put it back up, because I am glad I wrote it. So.
> 
> Avoid if anxiety and panic are issues for you. Some of this is made up, some of it remembered, so it might be a little close to home.

It starts with boredom, weirdly enough. He can't sleep. He twitches and tosses and kicks the sheets onto the floor. His joints itch, which doesn't make any sense. This is how it always starts, but he never sees the warning signs for what they are. He pretends each night is an isolated incident. To be fair, they aren't always as bad as tonight. Sometimes he can stamp it down, bite the terror between his back teeth and keep his jaw tense until morning. 

He rolls around, kicks his feet like he's swimming. He holds his arms straight up into the air and feels the blood drain down from his fingers. It's one of his I'm-bored-in-bed things, has been since he was little. He holds his arms as still as he can, and holds and holds until his fingers go numb and he feels like a double amputee. Then he curls each finger, slowly, fractionally, and feels warmth rushing back up his arms. 

And he's still bored. 

Eventually he starts to doze. That's the kickoff, that's what starts the whole thing. His head starts to swim and his eyelids droop and he drifts off. Just barely. And then the jerk. His legs spasm and his head snaps up and he gasps into the dark of the room like someone buried alive. And his brain starts to hum, a soft headache from exhaustion, sweat breaking out along his hairline, and the pain in his chest growing until he can hardly move. He doesn't realize he's making noises until they start to scare him. ( _There's something in my room. There's something in my room making noises. There's something in my bed making noises. There's something in my throat making noises. There's something in my throat, in my, something in my_ )

There are hooks digging into his ribs and  _pulling_  and it hurts, but he can't move and he can't fight it off because it's not  _there_ , there's nothing  _there_  and he wants to scream, but he's not sure if he can manage a big enough breath.

He sits up, back pressed against the wall, and hugs his knees. Lists neurotransmitters aloud and traces imaginary paths from brain to spine to lungs. But it doesn't work. He's tired, so tired, but more awake than he'll ever be. He doesn't realize that he's been slamming the back of his head against the wall until his father appears in the doorway, sleep-lines on his cheek and something scarred behind his eyes.

"Stiles?" He's not really asking, he knows, but he has to say the lines so that they can pretend this is an isolated incident. "What's wrong?"

He shoves his head between his knees and squeezes, fingernails raking along his scalp, but too short to cut ( _Why do I cut them so short? Last time I cut them so short they started bleeding, like I was ripping them out, ripping them out from the roots, am I one of those, now? Am I one of those kids who bleeds and likes it?_ )

He's making little "ah" noises, and then growling through gritted teeth when they don't turn into words. His father comes to sit at the edge of the bed, clicking on the bedside lamp.

"It's okay, I'm here."

Stiles shakes his head, viciously, banging his nose against his knees. 

"I'm so tired," he manages to whisper. "I just want to sleep. I just want to go to sleep."

"What's scaring you, huh? Come on, sit up, let's figure it out." He's so earnest, when he gets like this. He takes notes at the fucking psych appointments, every single one. "Can you trace the thought? What's the thing that woke you up? Breathe, boy, it's okay."

"Didn't wake up," he grumbles, and he's almost as annoyed as he is terrified. "Wasn't asleep. I don't know. I can't sleep."

"Okay--"

"No. Not like I  _am not able_  to sleep. Like I  _can not_  sleep. I should not sleep. I am not allowed to be asleep."

"Okay." He sounds so gentle, so fucking gentle, and calm and patient. "Why do you think that? What makes you think that?"

Stiles dares a look at him, and he looks old in the half-light, and his chest spasms with guilt and terror because he can see the days and months and years of his father's life wearing away under the pressure of this stupid, nerve-ridden kid. This overthinking, irrational, weak, unreliable  _kid._  His instinct is to brush it off, to tell his dad to leave him be, say he's fine, again, always, he's fine. But the lines in his father's face makes his ribs contract and his vision go spotty and he pushes his face back into his knees and rocks, face red with shame or lack of oxygen, he can't tell.

"Bad things happen. Someone has to. Someone has to keep watch. I have to."

"Stiles, there's nothing--"

"I know that! Okay? I know there's no logic and it isn't--it's probably not--real. But. If I was sleeping and in the morning Scott turned up dead, or hurt, or Lydia, or-- and I was sleeping. And I missed it, I didn't even know, I was just sleeping . . ."

"You can't keep bad things from happening by punishing yourself."

( _Preemptive punishment. is that a thing? Can you atone for all the sins you haven't committed yet? That's the Jesus thing, isn't it? Would this all be easier if they were still Catholics, or would he be stuck in the fog of her funeral and the incense and the crucifix with the blood on its side and the eyes rolling up . . ._ )

"Not punishment. It's not." He whines a little, to quiet to be a scream, but the shaking won't leave his bones, it's like his spine has goosebumps, but on the inside, along where the cords and fluids run. If he opens his eyes, the room is blotchy and distorted, the shadows in the corners don't  _look_  like anything, don't look like monsters or anything, just stretch and bend and cover more than their fair share of the space and it's like the room is his stomach and the shadows are the fear and it's pushing at the edges like it can split him open, them open, him and the room, open.

"I just have to be ready. I can't let it go, I can't. Someone has to--"

"Let me take it for awhile then, son. Get some sleep and I'll keep watch." Why does he  _do_  that? Why does he have to be that guy, the one who jumps in and takes bullets? Why does he make himself play along, try to keep up with the shattering of someone else's brain?

"If something happened to you." He can barely make the sentence come out, it hurts so bad. "If something happened to you." He makes himself say it again, because it hurts ( _Am I one of those, now? Am I one of those kids who hurts and likes it?_ ) "If something happens to you and I'm asleep and I'm not there and I let you  _take it--_ "

If he had claws, his legs would be bleeding by now.

"Okay. Okay, it's okay. I'm sorry it's okay--"

" _Why are you sorry?_  Don't be sorry.  _Don't._ " He flinches away from the sound of his own voice, ripping into the worn seams of his pajama pants.  "I'm sorry, I'm sorry. I shouldn't have shouted."

His father touches him, then, like he can't fight the instinct any longer, like he can't keep away. He grabs the back of Stiles' neck and pulls him in to his shoulder. He doesn't say anything for a long time, just holds firmly. Stiles imagines the warmth of his hand sinking in through the skin at the back of his neck, saturating his spinal column, catching the impulses that dart back and forth between brain and heart and stomach and lungs, calming them down with each transferred heartbeat.

After a long, long time, his father murmurs into his ear. "You aren't God, Stiles. You don't have magic powers; you can't magically protect everyone. No one can. You don't-- You're not God."

He bites his lips before his responds, but he has to. His father is holding him like he still loves him, so he has to respond.

"What if I am?"

"What?" His father pulls away, and he keeps his spine curved, looking at his knees and the ways they've flopped onto the mattress. 

"What if I am, and no one told me? What if I had that kind of power, but I didn't know?" He can't look at his father. He has to say it, but the top part of his brain, the part that is disgusted by the smell of his cold sweat and the redness of his eyes, that part calls him crazy and isn't entirely wrong. "What if I was God, and I dropped the ball? I closed my eyes? What if I'm God and I'm just letting them--"

"Stiles--"

"I know it's crazy, dad, I'm sorry, I'm sorry your son is crazy--"

"Stiles, don't--"

"You deserve so much better. Go back to bed. Go back to bed, I'm fine." He needs to stop talking, but he can't stop talking. There's something almost comforting about that, familiar.  "But what if there was some kind of magic and I was right? You know? Stranger things happen all the time, every day. This-- This  _terror_  that I'm always feeling, it's like an instinct. What if it's right? It's stupid and ridiculous and ninety-nine-point-nine-nine-nine-nine-nine percent impossible. But then there's that point-zero-zero-whatever-one percent that it's possible, because nothing is certain and nothing is one hundred percent. Not in real life. I can't risk it. Dad, I can't, I can't risk it. It's not worth it."

"Oh, my boy." His dad sounds like he could cry, which is awful. Because he deserves better than a crazy son who thinks he might be God and Stiles knows it. "The world's not going to end because you sleep."

"But what if it does?"

His father holds him again, by the shoulders this time. He pulls him close and then pushes him down onto the pillow, pulls up the sheets and tucks him in. He hooks the computer chair with his foot and wheels it over, settling himself into it, close enough to keep one hand planted on the edge of the mattress.

"It would be the worst thing," Stiles whispers. "Just the worst thing. To be God. That's the worst thing I could even think of." And then he starts to cry. He wishes his dad would take the pillow and hold it over his face, but he knows that would fuck his dad up too much and he deserves so much better. ( _Am I one of those now? Am I one of those kids who thinks about death and wants it?_ )

His dad traces a finger over his forehead, then down around his eyes, across his cheeks, under his nose, over the tip of his chin.

"Scoot," he says, and curls up on the bed with Stiles' head on his shoulder. Stiles keeps crying, barely aware. He isn't even ashamed of it, anymore. If you wring out a wet rag, you're going to get water. If you press anything hard enough, you'll get liquid.

"If the world ends because you fall asleep," his dad says quietly. "Then I'll be right here through all of it. And we'll figure out how to fix it. We're good at disasters, remember? And I'm going to be here, right here, no matter what. You don't have to be God on your own. I'm never, ever, going to leave you alone."

"You can't say that," he croaks, his voice nearly gone. He fists his hand in his dad's T-shirt and twists it around, stretching the fabric. He can hear the first birds start to wake up outside the window, and his breathing starts to even out.

"I can say whatever the hell I want," his dad mumbles into his hair. They both fall asleep in the next twenty minutes, and when Stiles wakes up he'll be alone, late to school, and he'll find a cold piece of toast on the kitchen counter with a note that just says, "Not home for dinner eat something Love Dad." 

He'll doze off in Chemistry, but it's okay. It's an isolated incident. 

 


End file.
